t I looked at her it was removed.
There was a dignity with her sweetness and a frankness with her
modesty, that convinced me, beyond all power of contrary report, of
her real worth and innocence."

During the Revolution Mme. de Genlis travelled about Switzerland,
Germany, and England. At Berlin, owing to her poverty, she supported
herself by writing, making trinkets, and teaching, until she was
recalled to France, under the Consulate. In Paris she produced some of
her best works--although they were written to order. Napoleon gave
her a pension of six thousand francs and handsome apartments at the
Arsenal. To this liberal pension, the wife of his brother, Joseph
Bonaparte, added three thousand francs.

From Mme. de Genlis, Napoleon received a letter fortnightly, in which
epistle she communicated to him her opinions and observations upon
politics and current events. Upon the return to power of the Orleans
family, she was put off with a meagre pension. Like many other French
women, she became more and more melancholy and misanthropic. She was
unable to control her wrath against the philosophers and some of the
contemporary writers, such as Lamartine, Mme. de Stael, Scott, and
Byron. Her death, in 1830, was announced in these words: "Mme. de
Genlis has ceased to write--which is to announce her death."

Throughout life she was so generous that as soon as she received
her pensions, presents, or earnings from her work, the money was
distributed among the poor. When she died, she left nothing but a few
worn and homely dresses and articles of furniture. The diversity of
her works and her conduct, the politics in which she was steeped,
the satires, the perfidious accusations that have pursued her, have
contributed to leave of her a rather doubtful portrait; however,
those who have written bitterly against her have done so mostly from
personal or political animosity. She was so many-sided--a reformer,
teacher, pietist, politician, actress--that a true estimate of her
character is difficult. A woman of all tastes and of various talents,
she was a living encyclopaedia and mistress of all arts of pleasing.
She had studied medicine, and took special delight in the art of
bleeding, which she practised upon the peasants, each one of whom she
would present with thirty sous (thirty cents), after the bleeding--and
she never lacked patients. Mme. de Genlis was an expert rider and
huntress; also, she was graceful, with an elegant figure,